


you're a stranger in my bed

by karnsteins



Series: the bad decisions that we made [1]
Category: The Outsiders - All Media Types
Genre: Alpha Cherry Valance, Alpha Dallas Winston, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, F/M, Mafia!Dallas Winston, Politics of ABO, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-16 00:14:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28822044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karnsteins/pseuds/karnsteins
Summary: this is how you fall out of love with her: two weeks missing, and her heels clicking across the floor. nightmare after nightmare where she is dead, her red hair mixing with her red blood and the thought that you did this, you fucked up, you hurt her, you dragged her into this when you damn well know that you shouldn't have.dallas and cherry, and the fall out of a scheme gone wrong.
Relationships: Sherri "Cherry" Valance/Dallas Winston
Series: the bad decisions that we made [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2113230
Kudos: 4





	you're a stranger in my bed

this is how you fall out of love with her: two weeks missing, and her heels clicking across the floor. nightmare after nightmare where she is dead, her red hair mixing with her red blood and the thought that you did this, you fucked up, you hurt her, you dragged her into this when you damn well know that you shouldn't have. 

that's not exactly how you fall out of love with her. at that point, you still thought of a future with her, or at least, a future you had lost because she was gone now. you started mourn the idea of moving with her through life, the possibility of you both. at that point, she was seeing her end as a tragic footnote to a life you both had wanted. and it was, at that point a life you had both wanted: she had pushed, eyes glittering, that she could _handle it_ , she could handle being what you were in the dark. she could handle the money, the crime, the blood, the subterfuge. she could do it, and you love her for it then, you think that she understood the rules, she understood the rules of it all. 

the thing is, she doesn't. you're distracted by her willingness, by the fiery part of her that doesn't back down. except the part of her that doesn't back down from the challenge of getting in the mafia is also the part of her that doesn't back from from the idea that getting out will be easy, romantic, will launch you both into the sunset together with a stack of money without consequences and that's the part of her that makes you fall out of lover with her. 

that part of her is what makes her leave in the middle of a job, it's the part of her that doesn't account what it will feel like for you to look for her scent everywhere and to come up empty, that doesn't account how mad you'll go when you get back to the apartment, surrounded by her but thinking she was dead, that part of her does not account for the reality of loss. it doesn't understand what you go through, with two-bit at your side, reassuring you that if she had been dead, her body would be sent to you, bit by bit. 

her body comes back to you, with her soul still in it, but it's different. you think she's a hallucination at first, the way she smiles over you. you don't even believe the scent, and you turn away from her, shoulders hunching up. _what kind of welcome is that?_ she says, her fingers on your shoulder, and when she pulls you back over, when she leans over to kiss you, then you believe her. then she feels real, and all you want to do is kiss her over and over again, and find out how did she live, how did she survive?

the answer is poison to hear: _i left. i took the money. so we could leave, dal, we could get away from all this._

all at once, you feel as if everything you've told her, everything you've ever explained about cheating the mob, about everything you've ever known and could ever tell her about the life you two supposedly shared simply doesn't matter in the face of her hope, in her naivete about what this was, about what you are. 

yes, you are many, many many things, most of them bad. what you aren't is stupid. when she smiles, offers that stupid idea, of running off together, you understand all the little things over the years that used to be subtle little warnings. they all convalesce together: the way she had tried to scrub you clean for her parents; the way she had pushed so hard for an expensive apartment in a place that you didn't want to go back to but had because she had asked; the way that loving her sometimes seemed more like pulling teeth. all of it was easy to smother but now, it's all a flag as red as her hair and you push her hands away from you. 

to her, you understand that you're a fantasy, a fix it. an alpha that was mean, angry, beneath her that she thought she was making more like herself, that she was turning into someone she could be seen with in public, who would one day be an inspiring story to tell to others, all capped off with a fairytale ending after running away from the mafia together. 

you fall out of love with her, and you have to figure out how to clean everything up. she fights you over it, and you tell her that what she wants is out of the question. you and two-bit have to set things up now to fix this, to get the money back and it tires you out, thinking of the years ahead. 

you never mated her because it wasn't something _girls like her did_. you had married her because it was what she did. the wedding ring becomes heavy as lead, and when she sleeps in another room, you take off the wedding ring, you remove the pendant from her neck and you let her figure out what that means. 

you thought you had more years than this, more love than this and you don't. 

you sleep in different beds, begin to have different lives. she tells you that someone is taking care of her rut. you don't got into her room anymore, and you stay in yours. you deal with your own with anonymous fucks, and when that's too much to bear, you stay in the apartment you never wanted, her scent fading day by day until there's hardly anything else. 

you find that you don't miss her; you miss the her that you thought you knew. it's a bitter thing to swallow, and to know that you loved a version of cherry valence that you made up, sure as she loved a version of you that she made up. 

you resolve to never do that again.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! there'll be some follow ups later; this is a little less loosely plotted than anything else i have here. eventually, dal/pony will happen but when? who can say! 
> 
> i love comments, kudos, holler at me on tumblr @madeleinepryor.


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